Phase III trials in China (Not rated) 17-Dec-06 04:10 am
Australian cancer drug to undergo clinical trial in China
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-17 14:45:43
BEIJING, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- Australian biotechnology company Progen Industries announced on Sunday its plan to conduct a third-phase clinical trial for a new anti-cancer medicine in China next year.
According to Progen, the newly-developed PI-88 produced positive preliminary results in the recently completed second-phase trial.
They showed that the medicine could increase a liver cancer patient's amount of survival time after a tumour was removed before it recurred by 76 percent.
Progen is now preparing for larger scale third-phase clinical trials in the United States, China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), the Republic of Korea and Singapore.
Ronni Poon, professor of surgery with the medical school of Hong Kong University, has been invited to supervise the next trial.
Poon said that although removal of tumours by surgery has become a common way to treat liver cancer, the rate of tumour reoccurrence is high and the long-term results are not satisfactory.
Currently, there is no other effective way to reduce the tumour occurrence for liver cancer patients, said the professor, who is also a doctor at Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong.
Statistics show that over half a million new cases of liver cancer are recorded worldwide each year, making it the fourth most common cancer and the third most fatal cancer.
China reported 346,000 cases last year, with 110,000 fatalities, which is 45 percent of the world total.
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